Multiple groups are urging the federal government to form a new expert panel to review the response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Plus, a former Canadian Human Rights Tribunal chair is alarmed by Justin Trudeau’s Online Harms bill, warning of severe penalties for hate-motivated crimes and speech.
And half of Canadians now find immigration levels too high, marking a significant shift from just over a year ago when only 21% felt the same.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Cosmin Dzsurdzsa and Noah Jarvis!
The list of premiers joining the revolt against the carbon tax is quickly growing, with most of Justin Trudeau’s provincial counterparts now calling for a halt to the impending tax hike.
Premiers from seven out of 10 provinces have now publicly opposed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax, which is set to increase Apr. 1.
Only the premiers of Quebec, British Columbia and Manitoba have thus far not publicly voiced opposition to the tax, although Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew wouldn’t say whether he had raised issues with the federal government privately.
That 70% of provincial premiers have signalled their displeasure with the carbon tax mirrors the seven in 10 Canadians opposed to it, according to a recent poll.
BREAKING: 70% of provinces and 70% of Canadians oppose Trudeau’s 23% carbon tax hike on April Fools' Day.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been one of the most outspoken premiers on the matter. Alberta took the federal government to court over the carbon tax as early as 2020. Smith has even gone as far as asking Trudeau to fire Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault over his failed climate policies.
She was joined by premiers from Ontario, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, who issued a joint letter asking Trudeau to extend his carbon tax exemption in November.
The latest first minister to join the fray in personally sending a letter to Trudeau was Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston.
“Rather than impose a punishing carbon tax that will hurt Nova Scotians, I am asking that you cancel the carbon tax before any more financial damage is done and work with us to focus on the most beneficial path for the environment, that would mean a more self-reliant (and cheaper!) path for Nova Scotia,” wrote Houston in his letter.
This letter was sent the same day that Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey sent a letter asking Trudeau to pause the upcoming carbon tax hike.
“We ask for the collaboration of the federal government to address the ramifications of the current challenges families face and not to compound them,” wrote Furey, a Liberal.
Saskatchewan’s premier, Scott Moe, another vocal advocate against the carbon tax, took a slightly different approach.
The Saskatchewan government officially stopped sending Ottawa federal carbon levy funds at the start of March.
Saskatchewan argued that the carbon tax was at least applied fairly until the Liberals implemented an exemption primarily benefiting Atlantic Canada.
“When asked what it would take to extend a similar affordability relief to families in Western Canada, a Liberal minister suggested that we should elect more Liberals. That’s no way to run a country,” said SaskEnergy Minister Dustin Duncan.
Saskatchewan had already stopped collecting carbon tax on electric heat at the start of this year. The province owns the natural gas utility SaskEnergy, which allowed it to stop collecting the tax. Guilbeault went as far as calling Moe “immoral” for breaking the carbon price law.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford called on the federal government to wake up and smell the coffee.
“Instead of raising the carbon tax by another 23 per cent, they need to scrap their terrible tax and start helping us keep costs down for hardworking Ontario families,” wrote Ford.
Prince Edward Island Premier Dennis King sent a letter to Trudeau the day before Ford’s announcement, requesting that the feds urgently act and revisit any further increases.
King said that P.E.I. is in a unique position.
“With most goods arriving by diesel trucks… adding to the cost of gas and diesel continually drives up the costs to goods, services, and food for Islanders,” he said.
New Brunswick’s Premier Blaine Higgs said that Trudeau’s carbon tax is “crippling” residents of the province. He added that he should stop any planned increase even if Trudeau doesn’t cancel the tax outright.
“Justin Trudeau is putting ideology above individuals and politics over people,” said Higgs.
While Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has not spoken out against the carbon tax, his government previously sought the same exemption from the carbon tax that Trudeau gave Atlantic Canadians on home heating.
The Progressive Conservatives in Manitoba have called on Kinew to stop collecting carbon tax on home heating for families and businesses, similar to Saskatchewan’s tactic.
The opposition to the carbon tax is so strong in the oil and gas powerhouse of Alberta that numerouscandidates in the NDP leadership race have announced their opposition to the carbon tax in their campaigns.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is asked on whether Alberta plans to lead a multi province united front to oppose to the carbon tax. pic.twitter.com/DUHEarbhwL
The opposition is not limited to the provinces, with one territorial premier also weighing in.
Northwest Territories Premier R.J. Simpson asked Trudeau for an exemption from the carbon tax. Nunavut and Yukon have not yet spoken out.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has called on Canadians to protest outside of Liberals and NDP MPs offices to cancel the carbon tax. He has also asked Canadians to bombard MPs with phone calls and emails.
There you are, the government of British Columbia, driving down the EV-transition highway, dreaming of the day that all cars will be electric, when suddenly the road is full of yellow warning signs and red lights showing your current speed and flashing “Slow down!”
Automakers are telling you they see electric vehicle (EV) demand declining and dealers can’t sell the EVs cluttering their lots. Car buyers in Canada and the United States are telling pollsters that they’re tepid on the idea, and even those with greater enthusiasm have serious concerns about range, technology, carrying capacity, charging infrastructure and price.
So what to do?
Well, if you’re the B.C. government, you dive still deeper into the fantasy of an EV transition, and accelerate your mandated timeline, declaring late last year that 100 per cent of new car sales in the province will be zero-emission by 2035, five years sooner than your previous-yet-equally-unlikely target date of 2040. This is the very definition of reckless driving.
Headlines virtually every day show that automakers do not believe mandates for an EV transition are plausible. In just one article in Business Insider, you can find quotes from the CEOs and senior leadership of General Motors, Toyota, Honda, Mercedes Benz and even Tesla who are all announcing slow-downs in their EV production plans and warning they see slower sales ahead.
Again, EVs are piling up on dealer lots, unsaleable even with massive government subsidies at point of sale and up through the production chain.
In Canada, buyers are the problem. They don’t want EVs.
According to a 2023 KPMG poll, of the 69 per cent of Canadians who expected to buy a new car in the next 10 years, only 28 per cent said they prefer an EV or plug-in electric hybrid while 42 per cent favoured gasoline-powered internal combustion engine vehicles and 30 per cent preferred hybrid gasoline/electric vehicles.
Further, 33 per cent were concerned about costs, vehicle charger availability, battery technology and potential vehicle supply. Nearly 70 per cent were concerned about the availability of public charging facilities. And 82 per cent said battery degradation remains a “huge” concern for them, so much so that 73 per cent said they won’t buy a used EV.
And 72 per cent don’t want to spend more than $50,000 on a new vehicle—good luck with that. The Tesla Model 3 runs from $55,000 to $73,000 while the Tesla Model Y runs from $60,000 to $76,000. And those prices were recently dropped to stimulate sales.
The Eby government in B.C., like the Trudeau government in Ottawa, must open its eyes and see the road ahead. On the EV transition, road conditions are bad and getting worse.
EV mandates are perhaps the best example of a horrible idea—that governments can engineer markets and choose winning and losing industries, goods, products and services in a market economy. Whether you call it industrial policy or central planning or dress it up in the language of “emission standards,” this fatal conceit of government always leads to policy disaster.
Rather than shortening its increasingly implausible EV adoption timelines, the B.C. government should scrap the idea of picking and choosing vehicle technologies while expecting consumers to follow its whims. Driving ahead blindly, while focused on a fantasy vision rather than the road ahead, never turns out well in the end.
Kenneth Green is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith told Justin Trudeau that scrapping the scheduled increase to the carbon tax would be a “political win” at a time when the Liberals desperately need one.
The leaders met at the Sheraton hotel in Calgary early Wednesday morning, although they attempted to keep the location secret from the public. Trudeau’s polling numbers are poor nationwide but especially in the west, and his recent trips to Alberta have attracted hoards of protesters.
In an exclusive interview with True North and The Counter Signal as she left the hotel to return to Edmonton, Smith said she raised the benefits of keeping the carbon tax at its current rate.
“I’ll let actions decide,” she said. “We’ll find out in a couple of weeks whether or not he was persuaded by it.”
NEW: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith just finished her meeting with PMJT. She says they found some common ground but she’s not sure if he’ll budge on the carbon tax. #abpoli#canpolipic.twitter.com/qEqk633J1y
Aggregated polling from 338Canada shows the federal Conservatives are leading Trudeau’s Liberals by 18 points.
According to legacy media reporters who were allowed in the room, Trudeau told the Alberta premier that rebates rise with the carbon tax.
“As of the beginning of April, the average family of four in Alberta will get $1,800 a year with the Canada Carbon Rebate,” he said.
The Trudeau government will be raising the carbon tax an additional 17 cents per litre of gasoline, 21 cents per litre of diesel and 15 cents per cubic metre of natural gas on April 1.
WATCH: I asked Alberta Premier Danielle Smith what she thinks of federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre asking Canadians to protest the carbon tax outside of Liberal/NDP MPs offices. pic.twitter.com/cER2pNNwhS
Seven premiers have told the prime minister to pause the carbon tax increase. On Sunday, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre called on Canadians to protest outside the offices of Liberal and NDP MPs.
“Politics is not a spectator sport,” he told supporters in Etobicoke, Ont. “It is a participation sport. If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. So you need to be at the table.”
Smith also said she and Trudeau found “common ground” on clean energy products together, like Dow Chemical’s $8.8 billion investment to build a net zero petrochemical complex near Edmonton.
The premier said she’s still trying to align the feds on Alberta’s target to be carbon neutral by 2050; Ottawa thinks that should be accomplished by 2035.
Following their meeting, Trudeau headed to a dental office at Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) for a press conference.
True North was not given accreditation and was required by SAIT security to leave or be charged with trespassing.
Team Trudeau went to extraordinary lengths to bar @TheRealKeean & I from his visit to Calgary – our home city.
Taxpayer funded police hounded us all day for trying to ask a couple questions.
At the media availability, Trudeau defended his environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, whom Smith has repeatedly said should be fired. He also went on a tirade about how Canadians must reduce their emissions.
“What decisions do we make collectively to tackle this problem,” he said. “The fact that we pushed off this problem for decades already means it gets more and more expensive to make the changes that are necessary.”
As premiers across Canada call on the feds to scrap the carbon tax, PM Trudeau goes on a long tirade in defence of the tax. He also defends Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault amid tensions between Alberta and Guilbeault. pic.twitter.com/YusVU5RLwD
Smith shot back hours later saying Trudeau’s defense was “admirable” but doesn’t align with reality.
“The evidence demonstrates that there’s an Environment minister who’s been given a pretty free reign to trample the constitution and trample national unity,” she said.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is asked to respond to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s defence of Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. pic.twitter.com/LOYwkLxB6T
Source: Tout le Monde en Parle - Radio-Canada - March 3, 2024
The reporter behind a Radio-Canada investigation that found gender clinics were quickly rushing teens into chemically transitioning with puberty blockers is standing by her reporting in the face of an onslaught of criticism.
While speaking on Tout le Monde en Parle, Radio-Canada journalist Pasquale Turbide said that concerns from parents prompted the investigation.
“Parents began writing to us last summer, when there was a bit of a controversy about names, pronouns, all-gender bathrooms, etc,” said Turbide in French.
“But the letters we were getting were not about those issues, they were talking about medical transitions.”
According to Turbide, a few of the parents contacting Radio-Canada had children who claimed they were transgender and were being offered puberty blockers by medical practitioners.
“We started to look into it, and we easily found fifteen to twenty people who were all telling us more or less the same story,” said Turbide. “They were often very open-minded parents, open to homosexuality, open to all sorts of things but were panicking at the speed of the transgender healthcare system.”
The investigation found that without medical referrals or parental consent, 14-year-old girls in the province can swiftly access cross-sex hormones. The documentary, called Trans Express, delves into this contentious issue, featuring interviews with both satisfied trans youth and supportive healthcare providers, as well as detransitioners and critics of gender-affirming approaches.
Turbide also said that current research is being conducted into puberty blockers but there remain many unknowns into the impact they have on development.
“We’re beginning to realize that they may have an impact on brain development,” said Turbide.
“Girls take testosterone, boys take estrogen and that’s semi-irreversible. Some things don’t come back even if they stop. One’s voice will stay changed most of the time. The face of their shape is another thing that’s affected. You can become infertile if you are a girl. It’s not yet clear how far it can go.”
Turbide explained that while transitioning can work for some people, there has been a surge of people seeking medical treatments related to transgenderism.
“There’s been a huge increase in the transgender clientele in the last 15 years and in this increase, we’re seeing more girls than before, a lot more people with mental health problems that won’t necessarily be resolved by transitioning,” said Turbide.
Pointing to the fact that some Scandinavian countries have moved to ban puberty blockers and intervene when it comes to children seeking life-altering treatments, Turbide said there were different models to approach the issue.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre announced that he will force numerous votes when Parliament returns to the House of Commons next week to spike Trudeau’s upcoming carbon tax hike.
The Conservative Party issued a news release on Wednesday announcing the plan to fight against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to raise the carbon tax by 23% and quadruple the carbon tax over the next six years.
“On April 1st, Justin Trudeau is planning to play a cruel joke on Canadians. Even as people struggle to put food on the table, gas in their cars, or heat their homes, he’s going to raise their taxes again,” reads the release.
The Conservatives referenced that almost 70% of Canadians oppose the upcoming carbon tax hike. The party also referenced the growing number of premiers opposing the carbon tax.
Nova Scotia’s premier was the most recent to join the lengthy list of premiers asking Trudeau to scrap the carbon tax, following Newfoundland and Labrador’s Liberal Premier Andrew Furey.
The list of provincial premiers opposing or defying the carbon tax now includes almost every province. The only premiers yet to publicly oppose or defy the carbon tax are from the provinces Quebec and British Columbia.
While the Northwest Territories have opposed the carbon tax publicly, Yukon and Nunavut have yet to do so.
“But Trudeau isn’t listening. He doesn’t care that people are struggling because of his failed policies. But Common Sense Conservatives are listening. We know Canadians need relief,” said the release.
The Conservatives said that they would force multiple votes in Parliament on the issue. The final vote will be next Thursday.
“Mark your calendars,” said the party.
The Conservatives called on Liberal and NDP MPs to stand with Canadians.
“Canadians will eventually get the chance to vote to axe the tax entirely in a carbon tax election. But next week, Liberal and NDP MPs will have multiple opportunities to listen to Canadians and vote with Common Sense Conservatives to spike the April Fools’ hike. Canadians should watch very closely to see if their MPs vote for pain and tax increases, or common sense relief for Canadians,” concluded the news release.
Poilievre also recently called on Canadians to protest outside of Liberal and NDP MPs offices and to bombard them with phone calls and emails.
This was when the Conservative leader initially announced his “massive pressure campaign” without getting into the specifics of his now-planned parliamentary votes.
After speaking with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in Calgary, Trudeau answered a question about Canadians and their opposition to the carbon tax. He responded with an eight-minute rant about how he would justify the carbon tax and its upcoming increase on April 1.
“My job is not to be popular, although it helps my job. My job is to do the right things for Canada now and do the right things for Canadians a generation from now. That’s what I’ve been focused on,” said Trudeau.
He added that he would not be firing Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, as Smith has repeatedly requested.
The carbon tax rebate recently received a makeover and was renamed the “Canada Carbon Rebate.” The name change came with no alterations to the pricing scheme or size of rebates.
The federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Franco Terrazzano, likened the rebranding effort to putting “lipstick on a pig.”
“Trudeau’s real problem isn’t that Canadians don’t know what his government is doing; Trudeau’s real problem is that Canadians know his carbon tax is making life more expensive,” said Terrazzano.
The tax increase on April 1 raises the pricing on carbon emissions from $65 to $80 per tonne. Fees are expected to rise annually as part of the national rebate plan until 2030.
The increase will tax an additional 17 cents per litre of gasoline, 21 cents per litre of diesel, and 15 cents per cubic metre of natural gas.
Multiple agencies are calling on the federal government to create a new expert panel to examine the public policies made by Canadian institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic to learn how to better handle something similar in the future.
Restoring public trust in government institutions was a key element of a new report jointly authored by the Institute for Research on Public Policy’s Centre of Excellence on the Canadian Federation and the Institute on Governance.
The government has yet to create an official commission on it’s handling of the pandemic, the IRPP and the IOG have partnered to pressure them into doing so.
Australia and the UK have already conducted formal inquiries into their government’s pandemic response.
After hosting a two-day national conference in June 2023 in Ottawa which brought together “key decision-makers, practitioners and civil society actors closely involved in the pandemic response to share experiences and ideas on how to make Canada’s institutions more resilient for the future,” the two agencies co-authored a report on what did and didn’t work during the pandemic.
The report titled, Resilient Institutions: Learning from Canada’s COVID-19 Pandemic was published on Wednesday and it aims to “retool and reinvest in the physical and technological infrastructure of the public service that supports public services to Canadians.”
“Canada has only a fragmented, partial picture of what happened to its institutions during the pandemic. We’re recommending that a forward-looking and truly national examination be conducted by an independent panel of experts,” says IRPP president and CEO Jennifer Ditchburn.
The report gathers an analysis of senior government officials and civil society leaders from throughout Canada who shared their experiences during the pandemic and outlines four major lessons learned. It also offers 12 recommendations for how best to handle future pandemic situations.
The report recommends better communication within intergovernmental relations in terms of decision-making, particularly when it comes to incorporating risk into new policy decisions.
“The panel should hear from key players in the provinces, territories, Indigenous communities and cities to better understand how the pandemic response unfolded. They should hear from the people who worked at the community level to understand how decisions and messages filtered down to everyday lives,” added Ditchburn.
The report also recommends better communication when relaying the complexity of those decisions to Canadians who may feel uncertain about them.
“The pandemic demonstrated vividly how our public institutions and public servants can be innovative, agile and nimble, but it also exposed core weaknesses that affected government responses and public health outcomes,” said David McLaughlin, president and CEO of the Institute on Governance. “We need to learn lessons from the pandemic now, while it’s fresh, and not snap-back to traditional ways of running governments that proved inefficient and outdated.”
The report concluded that a future pandemic response can only be as good as the public institutions which dictate it, and it calls for them to “build resilience so they are ready for what comes next.”
Today on the Alberta Roundup with Rachel Emmanuel, Rachel is joined by Rachel Notley’s former executive director of communication and planning, Cheryl Oates, to discuss the Alberta NDP leadership race.
Oates says Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is an “expert communicator” and the NDP need someone who can compete with her,
The two also discuss Naheed Nenshi, the former Calgary mayor who joined the race this week, and is already attacking Smith.
Also on the show, at least one candidate has promised to scrap the carbon tax, which Oates says the policy is “poison” in Alberta right now.
Statistics Canada data shows that police in Canada reported 3,576 hate crime incidents in 2022, marking a 7% increase from the 3,355 cases reported in 2021.
The slight rise follows two sharp increases in prior years, resulting in a cumulative rise of 83% from 2019 to 2022.
Police-reported data on hate crimes only capture incidents that are brought to police attention and are identified as either confirmed or suspected hate-motivated crimes.
The 2019 General Social Survey on Canadian’s Safety (Victimization) showed that 223,000 criminal incidents perceived to be motivated by hate in the 12 prior months were self-reported by respondents. Only nearly one in five of these incidents were reported to police.
Ontario had the most police-reported hate crimes in 2022 at 12.7 incidents per 100,000 people, followed by Nova Scotia and British Columbia.
From 2019 to 2021, British Columbia led the provinces in police-reported hate crimes per 100,000 people.
Newfoundland and Labrador had the lowest amount of police-reported hate crimes every year between 2019 and 2022.
Hate crimes targeting race or ethnicity were the most prevalent. This was followed by religion, sexual orientation, other motivation, and sex or gender had the lowest amount of motivation.
The majority of hate crimes were non-violent, but violent hate crimes increased more than non-violent hate crimes.
In 2022, general mischief represented 38% of all hate crime incidents, making the largest portion of hate crimes reported. The least reported type of violent or non-violent hate crime was public incitement of hatred and advocating genocide, accounting for only 2% of types of offences.
One of the Liberals’ selling points for the Online Harms Act is to increase the punishment for advocating genocide from two to five years to life in prison.
The number of police-reported hate crimes recorded as cyber crimes has more than doubled in the last five years, as has those not considered hate-motivated.
Hate crimes targeting a race or ethnicity rose by 12% between 2021 and 2022. Incidents targeting the black community accounted for 57% of the increase in these types of hate crimes, rising by 28%. Hate crimes targeting white people rose at an even greater rate of 54%.
While hate crimes targeting most races and ethnicities rose, such offences targeting Indigenous, Arab and West Asian, and East and Southeast Asian people all saw decreases between 2021 and 2022.
Police-reported hate crimes targeting Catholics fell drastically, decreasing 66% from 2021 to 2022. Meanwhile, hate crimes against Muslim people also decreased by 24%. Hate crimes targeting Jewish people rose by 2%. However, hate crimes targeting the Jewish population accounted for 67% of all hate crimes targeting a religion.
The information in the report reflects data from 2022, before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The data also does not cover the stark increase in church arsons over the last few years.
Data for 2023 will be released in summer 2024.
The majority of police-reported violent hate crime victims are men and boys, 63%. While men and boys were targeted more often in hate crimes targeting sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, and religion, hate crimes targeting sex or gender affected more women and girls, 73%.
The number of hate crimes targeting children and youth increased by 198% between 2019 and 2022. The most staggering increase was among young girl victims, which saw a rise of 232%.
Between 2018 and 2022, victims in the majority of violent hate crimes sustained no physical injuries. Only 3% of victims had major injuries requiring professional treatment or resulting in death.
Men and boys were more likely to sustain an injury.
The majority of people accused of hate crimes were also young men and boys. Between 2018 and 202, 86% of people accused of committing a hate crime were men and boys.
In 2022, only 29% of hate crimes were solved, compared to a rate of 34% for all criminal incidents, excluding traffic offences, reported to police that year.
For cases that were solved, 73% resulted in charges being laid. The remainder were solved without charges being laid. The rate of cases being solved for non-violent hate crimes was 12%, while violent hate crimes were solved at a rate of 48%.
“In 2022, three-quarters of unsolved police-reported hate crimes were due to insufficient evidence to proceed,” reads the report. It added that non-violent hate crimes such as mischief can have low rates of being solved because it is often difficult to identify who committed the crime.
Antisemitism isn’t just alive and well on American campuses, but also those in Canada, a new report finds.
A publication by the respected Canary Mission, a group dedicated to exposing antisemitism in academia, finds Canadian university staff and faculty are “openly supporting Hamas.”
The report highlights 10 faculty members, contending that these academics are justifying the atrocities of Oct. 7 using social justice, “decolonization,” and “resistance” as the rationale for their hateful stance.
”Despite the horror of their anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments the vast majority of these faculty and staff have not faced any significant consequences,” says Canary Mission.
Some 1,200 Israelis were raped or murdered in cold blood, some burned, on Oct. 7 in a surprise attack by Hamas terrorists. More than five months later, at least 100 Israeli hostages are still being held in Gaza, somewhere in the tunnel network or in private homes.
Canary Mission is well-known for documenting people and groups who display and promote hatred in North America of Israel and the Jews. It has even documented the hateful words and actions of students at Ontario universities such as Carleton and the University of Toronto at MIssissauga.
In its latest report, Canary Mission says some common themes have emerged in the statements and actions of these professors — who are primarily from Ontario — starting with their justification of Hamas and its terrorism.
The professors listed expressed support for Palestinian “resistance,” label Israel as a settler-colonial state, and consistently characterize Israel’s response to the atrocities of Hamas and the hostage-takings as “genocide.”
They also promote decolonization, an academic word that suggests the eradication of the Jewish state.
Many have shown themselves to be rape deniers and nearly all started posting their Israel hate within 24 hours of the atrocities of Oct. 7, if not the same day.
True North contacted three of the professors highlighted several times asking for comment. All three are on staff at Toronto universities.
Katherine Blouin, an associate professor of ancient history at University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus with a PhD in Roman history, did not respond.
Neither did Waqas Butt, a professor of anthropology also at U of T Scarborough.
But Heidi Matthews, an assistant professor at Osgoode law school at York University, did, labeling Canary Mission a “blacklisting site” that uses “McCarthyite tactics.”
She said its purposed it to “chill speech” on university campuses by targeting students and academics critical of Israel’s policies and practices.
”The site’s individualized political ‘dossiers’ are designed to instill fear, encourage harassment and disparage individuals’ reputations,” Matthews said. ”The Canary Mission is morally and politically abhorrent and its claims should be categorically rejected.”
But Canary Mission says the views of the three professors contacted and the remaining seven, have had the effect of “normalizing support for terrorism” within academic circles and legitimizing armed violence under the guise of “resistance,” in particular terrorism against innocents.
Most particularly these anti-Israel professors have helped ostracize Jewish students and faculty who feel targeted and unsafe. That certainly has played out on campuses across the country just like it has at American universities.
